


like a father to impress

by devviepuu



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 6x06 - Dark Waters, Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Season/Series 06, post episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devviepuu/pseuds/devviepuu
Summary: Henry had never rescued anyone before.  In this reality, at least.





	like a father to impress

Henry knew Hook wasn’t coming with him.   _Of course_ he knew.

God, what had he even been thinking?

He hadn’t, obviously, which was an unadvertised side effect of having the Heart of the Truest Believer:  belief didn’t often leave much room for thought, especially when things got emotional. Easy pickings for the Evil Queen, whom he had just let crawl into his head and make a nest right then and there -- but more importantly, Henry’s mom might die because he had, once upon a time, dragged her into this shitshow on the basis of that belief, so he was feeling pretty freaking emotional these days.

 _“Henry, language!”_ He heard his mother say, imagining her standing in the kitchen of the house he and Hook had picked out together. _“You sound like a drunken sailor.”_

 _“Watch it, Swan.”_ Henry pictured Hook’s exaggerated outrage, the raised eyebrow and the smirk. _“On my ship, men were expected to speak the King’s English.  I promise, he learned that particular colloquialism from you, love.”_

 _“He wasn’t supposed to hear me say it.”_ Emma would grumble.

 _“Henry’s a smart boy, and your voice carries.”_ Killian would grasp her forearm with his hook, and rub her shoulder with his hand before turning to face Henry. _“But do us a favor, lad, and listen to your mum_ . _”_

But Hook wasn’t here, and he wasn’t coming.  And there it went right back to that issue of belief:  spend enough time believing that everything would be all right, come hell or high water, and it was easy to miss the crucial details.  As in, only one dive helmet. As in, Hook, still in his street clothes. And _of course_ Henry knew that Hook wasn’t coming, probably knew it from the moment he’d triumphantly busted out the shears to put them to a use that didn’t involve severing his mother from her destiny, but Henry still let himself stew in it for a moment as he hit the water under the _Nautilus_.  He’d been pissed, letting himself get too caught up in his own shit -- what his moms called his “emo teenager” routine, which...was probably an accurate description, actually.  

But Henry _knew_ \-- no way was Killian Jones going to let something happen to Henry Mills, child of the woman he loved and the man he still mourned.  Hook had let himself drown in his own darkness for hundreds of years but since the day he turned his ship and set sail for Neverland without a backward glance to rescue the son of the boy he had loved, and lost, Hook had never once put himself before Henry.

Not once.

It would be bad form, and Henry knew just how badly Killian Jones did not want to be that kind of man any more.  He still had nightmares, re-watching Emma and Hook arguing about which of them was going to die to keep their family together; begging her to _let me go, let me die a hero_ , the moment when the wound reopened and the light went out of his eyes and his mother sobbing over the loss of one person she’d let herself need -- someone who didn’t need her to be a mom or a daughter or the Savior; someone who just wanted her to be her, as best she was able to, because it brought out the best in him -- it ranked right up there in Henry’s mind with his father’s funeral and the time he had screamed himself hoarse begging Regina not to let the green magic at the Wishing Well kill Snow and Emma.

No, Henry was the one who was guilty of bad form at the present, and though Killian would never say as much, Henry felt the weight of Hook’s disappointment in the face of his angry accusations as though the emotion was pushing him under the speeding vessel.  Because if Hook had been Emma’s anchor in the Light, it was family -- _their family_ , fucked-up shitshow that it sometimes was -- that had ultimately pulled Killian back from the brink.  And Henry’s response had been to carelessly demand that the man who had let his true love run him through with Excalibur in order to save all of them prove himself, yet again.

Ugh, he really was an emo teenager.

The thought brought a smile to his face before he knew what was happening, and Henry twisted himself in the unwieldy dive suit, trying to grasp onto something -- a hold, right _there_.

 _“Henry, lad_ ,” he heard Killian saying, _“Whatever it is you are trying to atone for -- I already forgive you.”_

Henry had willingly gone into the Underworld for Killian Jones.

He wasn’t going to leave him to die on some bloody submarine.

 

\--

 

Henry had never rescued anybody before.

Since the first day his grandmother had given him the storybook, Henry had dreamed of going back to the Enchanted Forest - of riding horses and sword fights and quests and adventures, and of being a hero.  He’d been to Neverland, to New York, to Camelot, to the Underworld, and back again; he had learned to ride and wield a sword and sail. He’d plotted Operation Light Swan and met Merlin. He’d _flown._  He’d watched people he loved die and hadn’t been able to do anything about it, and when he saw Liam on top of Killian, knife against his throat, Henry had frozen -- _not again_ was all his brain was capable of at that moment.

He’d had his entry line all ready - _“I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you_ ” - not that Hook would get the reference because they still hadn’t had a night quiet enough to indulge in something as simple as watching a movie, but whatever -- and then found himself completely unable to say anything at all.

“Don’t,” was all that came out, after more effort than Henry imagined speaking would ever take.  “Please, stop -- please.”

Liam turned, and there was something in his eyes - a flash of recognition? - before Killian  knocked him unconscious.

“I thought I told you to leave,” Hook said calmly, as he seated himself on the small couch.

“And if I listened,” Henry said, matching his tone, “you’d be dead.”

Something that might have been the beginning of a grin flitted across Hook’s face.  “Then I’m glad you didn’t.” A pause, just for an instant, but it was pregnant all the same before he asked the question:  “What made you come back?”

Regina had told him once, back when he was cursed, that one day he would have more family than he would know what to do with.  More than two places at the Thanksgiving table was all he was looking for, and now they regularly overfilled Granny’s on family dinner nights.

It was inescapable that one of those seats was always filled by Hook, and had been practically since the day they returned from Neverland.

“You said you couldn’t ruin another family,” Henry said simply.  “Neither could I.”

 

\--

 

Hook quickly determined their position using the charts Liam had left at the helm, assigning Henry to take the wheel while he charted a course back to Storybrooke.  Liam’s men, most of whom remembered Hook from before their unplanned trip to the Mysterious Island, gave them a wide berth that allowed them to get back into port and resurface quickly.

“Ring your mother on the talking phone, lad,” Killian said as soon as they were pulling into the harbor, his command of the terminology slipping in his agitation, his accent thickening with worry.  Henry refrained from reminding him that it was just a phone, not a talking anything, and remembered the time he had accidentally said “cell phone” and Hook had wanted to know why no one had explained to him that the ridiculous tiny device with an “Emma button” was mermaid magic.

“I’m sorry,” Henry had said, “mermaid magic?”

“A shell phone, lad,” Hook had said, impatient.  “Isn’t that what you called it?”

Henry had never heard of anything so ridiculous in his life, and he had been the one to figure out that his elementary school teacher was actually Snow White.  He was careful never to mention cell phones again.

“It’s fine, Killian,” Henry said.  “I’ve got her -- hey, Mom, it’s me.  Hook and I are on our way to the hospital -- no, we’re both fine, but there has been an accident.”  Emma’s voice was so agitated and confused that Henry just spoke over her instead of trying to answer any of her questions.  “It’s fine, Mom, Killian and I are both fine, I’ll explain when you get down here.”

Henry hung up, thought for a moment, and made another phone call.  “Grandpa? I need you to meet me down at the docks with your truck.  Someone was injured by the harbor and we need to get him to Dr. Whale as soon as possible.”  He hung up without saying goodbye.

Henry turned back to Killian.  “Thanks, mate,” Hook said, relief spreading over his features.  “Shall we wait here together for your grandfather, then?”

“Go sit with your brother, Hook.  I can take care of myself, remember?”

“Aye,” Hook answered.  “Indeed I do. Thank you, Henry.”

 

\--

 

Henry sat with his mother in the waiting room, watching her.  She was pale and agitated even though she had already seen with her own eyes that both Henry and Hook were safe and unharmed; Henry knew that he was not the only one who fought off the occasional nightmare of her time in the darkness.

Of losing Hook.

Henry had tried to save his mother, starting from the day he had shown up at her door in Boston.  Henry liked to think -- hell, he knew -- that part of what had kept Emma from embracing the Dark Ones was her love for him.

But it was her love for Hook that had kept her sane, and when it was lost, so was she.

Henry had seen the lengths these two would go to save each other.  He knew why Hook had kept the shears. Knowing Emma, if their roles had been reversed, she would have done the same thing. She had trusted him, probably even before she should have, and she knew he would never hurt her.  Or her son.

Henry knew this because he had once asked Killian about it, back when he was cursed.  “I’ve never even heard of you,” he had said the first time Emma deposited him down at the docks.  “And now we’re driving you to Maine and my mom is asking you to be my babysitter.”

“You might laugh at me, lad,” Killian had said, “but your mother knows me to be a man of honor.”

Henry had laughed, because the words had sounded so ridiculous and old-fashioned, and that had been back when Hook was still wearing his duster and sword.

And, later, when Henry remembered enough to ask him about Neverland, when he had his memories and understood that the stories Hook had told him about Neal were true, Hook would only say the same thing.  “I saw a chance to be the man I wanted to be, Henry. A man of honor.”

Henry would have liked to save his father -- if he could have, if he had even remembered who the man was when he died.  Grieving was difficult; Emma was so overcome, she could barely speak, and when she did, the words didn’t make sense to his cursed self.  How could a man who had abandoned her -- abandoned them -- be this hero she was so devastated to lose?

It was Hook who had brought him out to the sea, on a boat that Henry still to this day suspected he borrowed without permission because the _Jolly Roger_ was still in Blackbeard’s custody, and made him build a fire.  And tie knots. And encouraged him to sit in companionable silence and let the sound of the ocean and the distance of the horizon soothe him until it was dark enough to pull out the sextant.

Cursed Henry hadn’t been able to understand why a man so fluent in navigation, so comfortable with a naval life, had difficulty with the constellations, but Hook had found a way to make him see himself in his father, to understand him and to feel a personal connection even when he hadn’t known the man (either man) at all.

After the second curse broke, Henry found a copy of _The Stars_ by H.A. Rey in the library.  It was a children’s book, but a beautiful one, and the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere were lovingly laid out.  Henry had seen it often, after that, in its place on the shelf over the captain’s desk on board the _Jolly Roger_.  It had pride of place next to the daily log Hook still maintained, and when Belle had noticed that the book was missing from the library, Henry had only needed to explain who it was for to get a winning smile out of her.

Henry would gladly have tried to save Robin, who was kind and gentle and brought both of those things out in Regina in ways that his ten-year-old self wouldn’t even have imagined were possible.  He missed Robin, still, and he missed Roland. He’d been thinking about teaching Roland to play with his toy swords in exchange for a few archery lessons; about being a big brother and what it might mean to have someone like Roland in his life.  It would be years before his uncle was old enough for that kind of connection, and by then Henry would be older still.

“He cared for you, lad,” Hook had told him.  “He’d want you to be strong for your mother.”

“How do you know?”

Hook paused, and it was clear that he was thinking over every single word before he shared it.  “Because he loved your mother, more than life itself. Because he knew how important you are to her.  Because he knew what kind of man you may someday be, and he was proud to watch you follow wherever your path might lead.”

No, Henry had never rescued anyone before, but the universe had decreed that it would be Hook who needed saving when only Henry was able to provide it.  And Henry knew what both of his moms would say in response to that thought -- the usual lecture about forces working in the world that we don’t understand.

Fate.

Maybe it _was_ fate that Killian needed Henry just at the moment when Henry was completely, painfully cognizant of how much he did not want to lose this man.  But Henry wasn’t going to admit that -- he was still enough of an “emo teenager” that giving Hook that kind of satisfaction was beyond him.

“I’ve got this, mate,” Killian said.  And Henry knew he did, knew that they would find another way.  That was what this family did.

“See you at home,” Henry said, but Hook’s eyes softened in the way they sometimes did when he looked at Emma; like he had found more than he had ever hoped to look for.  And Henry resolved to try and find out if herring - or better yet, lox -- was an adequate substitute for boiled mackerel, and to teach Killian that it was best consumed with bagels and not grapefruit.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> "like a father to impress  
> like a mother's mourning dress  
> if you ever make a mess  
> i'll do anything for you"
> 
> \-- for the widows in paradise, for the fatherless in ypsilanti
> 
> i find myself re-watching this episode a lot. because it really did seem uncharacteristically cruel of henry. this is how i worked through it.


End file.
